tymmur

So I guess our PHP setup wasn't that "unusual" after all...  Sorry it took that long either way, was out camping and not dealing with Invision's BS.
The themes need to be updated, as usual when updating IPB.

I know that feeling. Sadly that's not going to aid the translation speed or quality.
Way back before this thread was even started (and before the HD version was announced obviously) I did consider it because of the game engine, which is English hostile. Basically if you just replace the Japanese text with English, it will crash. The problem is that the most significant bit on the first byte in a line determines if it's a command or text. This bit is 1 for all Japanese characters and 0 for all English characters, which means English will cause the game to try to execute the commands and then crash on unknown commands. Porting the story part would be strait forward, but there is the whole economy and RPG (or at least character stats and levels), which would essentially need a remake rather than a port. There are other parts too, which would be near impossible to just port.
 
Once I realized what the problem was, I wrote a script to ensure that all the lines starts correctly. Due to adding other error checking/correcting features and stuff, I remade the tool. I then remade it from scratch again later to split code and translatable text to ensure that translator(s) can't break the code. Now it's working perfectly.
 
Considering Ren'Py for the HD version made no sense because without the HD graphics, we might as well just stay with the old version. I worked very hard on extracting the script and I eventually succeeded in that. Next I spent an eternity getting a single modified line back inside the game and once I did that, porting was no longer something to consider. It seems that the HD version added new commands to do new fancy stuff with graphics, but otherwise the two engines seems to use the same scripting language.
 
I would actually be sorry to leave the game engine because it's pretty good once you get to know it. It's not compiled (like some other VNs), meaning I'm now in full control. The engine is quite feature rich and can do stuff most engines can't. For instance both character screens and training are 100% script code. The interactive training screens are actually a lot of code to change "character" sprite, move them as well as play audio, all widely used commands in traditional VN sense. There is a command to wait for a mouse click, which reads the object, which is clicked and then the action on that object is handled with VN script code. An engine, which is able to do this is too awesome not to use.
 
Having full control of the game engine means the ability to do anything. I have fixed a number of bugs, rebalanced training to make all girls sort of equal (you no longer have to pick the same each time for financial reasons), made some virtually impossible to get H scenes to just hard to get as well as enabling some unreachable HCGs (mainly missing due to typos). This means once the translation is done, it should also be possible to get 100% in the CG history without cheating (though it still requires many playthroughs). It also means stuff like girls not getting stat changes behind the text window, which makes it near impossible to see the numbers. The game is not without bugs, but the (custom) engine seem not to be to blame for this and they all seem fixable in the script.
 
In short: it's the VN engine I know the best by now and it also seems to be the best VN engine I have ever seen, particularly for this VN. Moving away from it seems really stupid.

To my knowledge there isn't any online extractor. I spent ages writing a tool to extract even just the script. Sadly it's undistributable for technical reasons (near impossible to move between computers and will never work in windows) and it takes skill to use it, but it gave me the script, which unlocks the option of translating the VN. All this work and I haven't even come to the issues involved in getting the script back into the game or moving the already translated lines to the HD version. And then there are the lines, which are hardcoded into the exe file, meaning there is a need for a translated exe. Does the fun ever stop?
(I fixed all the issues mentioned here as well as lots of other issues)
 
Now that most(all?) technical issues have been solved, we need to get the translation going and for that we need translators. Pushing RaurosFalls to work faster is not an option (he is really doing fine now), meaning the only option to speed up is to get more people involved. In other words we are recruiting translators.
 
Work as a translator used to be complex and error prone due to writing in a file with mixed text and code. Now it's split and translators get a spreadsheet like interface with the line in one cell and room to fill in the translation in the next. Each line also have cells for notes and other useful stuff. In other words translators do not need any skills other than the ability to translate. Let me know if you are interested.

The translation is finally progressing again as RaurosFalls has resumed work on Zakuro's route.

The translation is finally progressing again as RaurosFalls has resumed work on Zakuro's route.

The translation is finally progressing again as RaurosFalls has resumed work on Zakuro's route.

Our translator for Hijiri checked in his first chunk of work this week, a round of TLC of all the previous work on that route, so the ball is officially rolling there, which is excellent news as that is now the only untranslated material left in the game. Mii's route has now been fully translated, and editing is most of the way through with it as well (including both of us wrapping up the marathon H scene...). Also a lot of TLC progress this week. All in all, a good week:
TL: 36072/40208 (89.7%), +743 (1.8%)
Edit: 35485/40208 (88.2%), +667 (1.7%)
TLC: 25297/40208 (62.9%), +3170 (7.9%)
The project is tracking really well, so I want to again warn people that even once those numbers say 100%, there's still going to be a fair bit of work left to do, and I won't be in a position to even forecast a release date for a while. We'll be done when we're done.

I too am still alive. I'm just horribly busy for the time being.

I too am still alive. I'm just horribly busy for the time being.

Hey, just letting you guys know I'm alive. Maybe I'll come back to this one day.

I'm a test tube baby. Born because of your impossible mathematical equation. Filled with Annoyance, Assholishness, and 101 ways to call people an idiot.

The thread "Post pics you like" lives off the posts made by a single user, Jun Inoue. If not for Jun, the thread would hardly have any posts, and Fuwa would be a cold and sad place without proper memes to fuel its users' daily requirement. Jun's ability to find funny pictures and gifs to share with Fuwanovel is treasured and loved by all, and the site has not seen a user with such an amazing post-like ratio since Fiddle.
 
I made several attempts at getting an interview with Jun, to ask him why he is so motivated to bring Fuwanovel memes and hilarious gifs, but every time I checked his profile to see if he was free, I was met with the same situation time and time again.

And, by scrolling down on his profile, you will see just how dedicated he is to his mission of never letting Fuwanovel go a single day without memes!
Taking all of this into account, I think it would be unfair for the thread to keep its current name, and instead suggest we rename this thread to: "Pics Jun Inoue likes."
 
I have made a poll on this thread, and ask that you all vote, so that we can make this change happen!

It's been bothering me that Fuwanovel uses HTTP for the main website and all subdomains (including these forums) and immediately downgrades all secure connections to HTTP via a redirect (301). This is concerning because all requests such as logins, sending session cookies etc. are transmitted in plaintext, making it trivial for a man-in-the-middle attack to steal user credentials (and users tend to re-use those on multiple sites even though they should know better) or hijack sessions, they can read all messages and intercept or modify them at will, including sending the user to their own site while making it appear as fuwa (there are also many other good reasons to switch everything to HTTPS , but these are currently the most pressing issues).
To prevent this, HTTPS should be enabled everywhere and should be enforced by enabling HSTS to avoid attacks such as those of sslstrip.
(ignore the next paragraph if you already how to fix this issue and just haven't come around to do so yet - though at least the first part shouldn't take very long at all and the second isn't too bad either)
One possible solution: Since Fuwanovel already uses Cloudflare, you can fix part of the connection very easily: Go to Cloudflare -> Crypto, set SSL to Flexible (should already be that way, really we want Full (strict), but that might involve more steps on your part, see below), and enable HSTS on all subdomains (hard to go back on, but you shouldn't ever want to go back on it anyways), you also might want to redirect everything to HTTPS one way or another. This fixes the issue for the connection between users and Cloudflare, however the connection between Cloudflare and your servers is still insecure, so make sure your web servers support HTTPS (might involve some tweaking of configurations or proxying in the worst case if your web server doesn't support it) and you have a valid certificate set up (certificates from Let's Encrypt are free and easily automatable, don't see a reason not to use them), then set the Cloudflare SSL setting to Full (strict). Now the connections between Cloudflare and your servers are secure as well. (You could optionally set up Authenticated Origin Pulls to make sure you're only responding to traffic coming through Cloudflare.)

The only reason to play VNs is for lonely people to gain a fake interaction with people after their cruelty have driven away all real people from even speaking to them.

All fan translations are illegal.  The Berne Convention specifically provides that copyright holders have control over translations.  Fan translations exist at the sufferance of the copyright holders, who have the legal authority to go to court to demand that any project be stopped.
However, most companies don't know, or don't care, about the patches.  And even the ones that do care can't really do much about it, because VN developers are usually poor, and suing people in a foreign country is very expensive and time consuming and a pain in the ass.  That's why you hear about translation projects shut down by C&D, but never any actual lawsuits being filed.
Fan translations are an ethical grey area, not a legal one.  Paying someone to produce a fan-translation is unethical in addition to being illegal (because someone is making money off someone else's work without paying for it or getting permission).  It also is significantly more likely to get rightsholders pissed off enough at you to decide they want to try to make an example out of you.
 
As a fantranslator myself, I can tell by how much the OP is offering that they have no idea how much translators charge, or how long it takes.  It took me two and a half years to translate Nocturnal Illusion from scratch, and that's a game I'd already played in English multiple times.  It isn't even a particularly long game, either.  I spent hundreds of hours during that time on the game.  $500 might be a lot of money to the OP, but in terms of how much work is involved, it's peanuts.
You can motivate translators to work on something they're not particularly fond of.  By paying the industry going rate.  However, professional translators charge somewhere between ten cents and a dollar per word.  (I've never done pro work - not nearly good enough - so I can't quote you real numbers.)  Nocturnal Illusion's script is easily 500K characters in Japanese.  That's about fifty thousand dollars; a hundred times the original offer.  (Now, h-games probably pay somewhat less than the going rate.  Still.)

This post made me giggle.
Edit: ABout hiring people to do fan tls, don't. xD

So real quick let me make a fool of myself. The story begins in my Kindergarten class, which had like 24 kids in it, it was a Monday (I know this because my Grandmother always took me to school on Monday) Anyway it was a Monday, but it was a special Monday! The teacher, or should I say "teachers" (since we actually had two) had made and brought cupcakes (for those who could have them) and muffins (for those that couldn't)     Anyway so I, being the socially weird child that I was, came up with this childish reasoning for cupcakes and muffins. So little me sitting there in his little chair thinking he had just solved every mystery ever, jumps up and hushes the other students. For some reason I got really into it and I spoke in a hushed voice, "I understand these snacks now," Little me whispered, "Muffins are bigger and tougher and they tend to suck, kind of like boys?" Kids laughed but I continued, "And cupcakes are generally smaller, sweeter, and they can be cute, sort of like girls?" By now everyone was rolling on the floor and little me stood there looking smug and all that. Anyway after all that time my friends always remembered what had happened that day and the nickname McMuffin came into play, eventually it evolved into StuffiMcMuffinz and it stuck.  
Anyway sorry for the story it just felt right you know?
To wrap it up quickly before I drone on like the old man I am, Hi I'm McMuffin, StuffiMcMuffinz, Muffin, or just whatever you decide to call me, Nice to become a part of a community built on something that brings me joy.

It's a hard question to answer, or at least to pick one of the choices. The professional work like MG is actually just getting the Japanese image from before they censored it. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they made something, which was really quick because it would be censored anyway.
 
I think my answer would be that I prefer good looking uncensored/decensored from whoever can do it best. However there are horrible artworks out there where it's valid to argue for censoring it to hide the awfulness. In other words all the options in the pool could be the best as the answer depends on the specific VN/artwork. Also if we go into this, we would also have to consider that just like there are multiple uncensored versions, there are multiple ways to censor images. Suddenly this rather simple question becomes quite complex to answer.

I guess it's time to make a quick update. Not sure why people can assume this to be dead. If you look at the progress link in the second post, the numbers increase nearly daily.
 
RaurosFalls is back in action and is currently working on the last half of the last file in Yuzu's route. That will be the second route to be finished.
 
My current goal is to get everything up and running with the HD version and transfer the translated lines. While it might be a a newer version of the same engine, so much has changed that it's essentially a new engine, which I have to figure out. It's progressing steadily and will just be a matter of time. It turns out that most of the lines are unchanged, which means the translation can be reused. However they changed some lines, which will likely result in no fully translated files. How much new translation work this result in is still unknown.
 
I have decided to drop support for the 2008 version. One reason is that given the difference in the engines, making it work on both would be too much work. The other reason is playing around with the HD version is.... wow... just wow. The resolution is significantly higher and the visual improvements from that are better than I expected. However I would say the resolution is really a minor thing compared to the other changes. The new engine can scale, mirror and move sprites quite freely and it seems all scenes have been rewritten to make full use of this. Zooming in on something in the background happens from time to time and the zoomed in vision can move around according to which items are of interest in the text, like center vision on one character sprite and then turn the head to center on another if the other one starts talking. Most impressively is the moving background of the sidewalk where slowly zooming in gives the impression of 3D where you walk into the background, even though it's just a 2D image. In other words, the remake is significantly better even if we ignore the resolution. No comments on the added contents or training because I haven't come that far yet.

Editing numbers are misleadingly good this week because the script has some copy-pasted scenes from the prologue to the common route, which are now completed. There was also just plain more time spent on it this week than usual, so there's a fair bit of "real" progress there as well, including completion of our first fully-edited large section beyond the prologue (Prologue2_1, effectively the common route for one side of the game). On the other hand, less progress on TL this week than usual. A couple TLs have been busy with work, school, etc., and another reported in sick for a while with an adorable picture*. Good news is that he's up and at em again, and one of the TLs who has been tied up for a while is also back in the fray, so overall I expect this week to go down as a minor blip and progress to continue apace.
Translated: 14829 / 40208 (36.9%), +292 (0.7%) week-over-week
Edited: 10946 / 40208 (27.2%), +2535 (6.3%) week-over-week
Others: no change
*Glad you're back on your feet now, @frogstat

I guess it's time to make a quick update. Not sure why people can assume this to be dead. If you look at the progress link in the second post, the numbers increase nearly daily.
 
RaurosFalls is back in action and is currently working on the last half of the last file in Yuzu's route. That will be the second route to be finished.
 
My current goal is to get everything up and running with the HD version and transfer the translated lines. While it might be a a newer version of the same engine, so much has changed that it's essentially a new engine, which I have to figure out. It's progressing steadily and will just be a matter of time. It turns out that most of the lines are unchanged, which means the translation can be reused. However they changed some lines, which will likely result in no fully translated files. How much new translation work this result in is still unknown.
 
I have decided to drop support for the 2008 version. One reason is that given the difference in the engines, making it work on both would be too much work. The other reason is playing around with the HD version is.... wow... just wow. The resolution is significantly higher and the visual improvements from that are better than I expected. However I would say the resolution is really a minor thing compared to the other changes. The new engine can scale, mirror and move sprites quite freely and it seems all scenes have been rewritten to make full use of this. Zooming in on something in the background happens from time to time and the zoomed in vision can move around according to which items are of interest in the text, like center vision on one character sprite and then turn the head to center on another if the other one starts talking. Most impressively is the moving background of the sidewalk where slowly zooming in gives the impression of 3D where you walk into the background, even though it's just a 2D image. In other words, the remake is significantly better even if we ignore the resolution. No comments on the added contents or training because I haven't come that far yet.

I guess it's time to make a quick update. Not sure why people can assume this to be dead. If you look at the progress link in the second post, the numbers increase nearly daily.
 
RaurosFalls is back in action and is currently working on the last half of the last file in Yuzu's route. That will be the second route to be finished.
 
My current goal is to get everything up and running with the HD version and transfer the translated lines. While it might be a a newer version of the same engine, so much has changed that it's essentially a new engine, which I have to figure out. It's progressing steadily and will just be a matter of time. It turns out that most of the lines are unchanged, which means the translation can be reused. However they changed some lines, which will likely result in no fully translated files. How much new translation work this result in is still unknown.
 
I have decided to drop support for the 2008 version. One reason is that given the difference in the engines, making it work on both would be too much work. The other reason is playing around with the HD version is.... wow... just wow. The resolution is significantly higher and the visual improvements from that are better than I expected. However I would say the resolution is really a minor thing compared to the other changes. The new engine can scale, mirror and move sprites quite freely and it seems all scenes have been rewritten to make full use of this. Zooming in on something in the background happens from time to time and the zoomed in vision can move around according to which items are of interest in the text, like center vision on one character sprite and then turn the head to center on another if the other one starts talking. Most impressively is the moving background of the sidewalk where slowly zooming in gives the impression of 3D where you walk into the background, even though it's just a 2D image. In other words, the remake is significantly better even if we ignore the resolution. No comments on the added contents or training because I haven't come that far yet.

I guess it's time to make a quick update. Not sure why people can assume this to be dead. If you look at the progress link in the second post, the numbers increase nearly daily.
 
RaurosFalls is back in action and is currently working on the last half of the last file in Yuzu's route. That will be the second route to be finished.
 
My current goal is to get everything up and running with the HD version and transfer the translated lines. While it might be a a newer version of the same engine, so much has changed that it's essentially a new engine, which I have to figure out. It's progressing steadily and will just be a matter of time. It turns out that most of the lines are unchanged, which means the translation can be reused. However they changed some lines, which will likely result in no fully translated files. How much new translation work this result in is still unknown.
 
I have decided to drop support for the 2008 version. One reason is that given the difference in the engines, making it work on both would be too much work. The other reason is playing around with the HD version is.... wow... just wow. The resolution is significantly higher and the visual improvements from that are better than I expected. However I would say the resolution is really a minor thing compared to the other changes. The new engine can scale, mirror and move sprites quite freely and it seems all scenes have been rewritten to make full use of this. Zooming in on something in the background happens from time to time and the zoomed in vision can move around according to which items are of interest in the text, like center vision on one character sprite and then turn the head to center on another if the other one starts talking. Most impressively is the moving background of the sidewalk where slowly zooming in gives the impression of 3D where you walk into the background, even though it's just a 2D image. In other words, the remake is significantly better even if we ignore the resolution. No comments on the added contents or training because I haven't come that far yet.

Most likely what you're talking about is actually intentional, but as I'm writing out the whole explanation here, it's definitely unnecessarily complicated... so it probably was a bad decision and comes off as clumsy on our part. Oh well. At any rate, here's how tense is intended to work:
All scenes outside of the diary occur in present tense. The diary scenes are mostly in past tense because they are recounted from the perspective of someone writing a diary. The first two such lines are actually Alice quoting from the diary to try to make that clearer, and then we actually go into "diary view", stepping into the diary narrator's shoes, but still keeping past tense and narration from the perspective of one writing a diary. There are occasional "asides" in the diary narration, though, which ended up in present tense; these were treated as interjections by the narrator of the diary in present tense. I.e., they don't narrate events as they were happening, but thoughts the narrator had at the moment of writing, and thus would have been written in present tense in the diary. Like I said... probably unnecessarily complicated. The other exception to the general rule was H scenes, which we put in present tense, because, as a wise person on the team put it, it's sort of a "put on your 3D glasses" kind of moment. I think all of the above, except possibly the H scene exception, is consistent in both the JP original and our translation. Well, admittedly I don't know the reasoning for their choices of tense, but I assume it's similar to our reasoning for maintaining those choices. Of course, it's entirely likely we made actual errors regarding tense, even if you apply all those rules and exceptions.
I found two straight-up errors (not related to tense, but nonetheless, errors) the day after we shipped the patch, when I was just crawling through for screenshots... sigh... but that's the nature of releasing something.
I still do too
We will be doing another pass on the prologue before shipping the final patch, hopefully ironing out a few more of the wrinkles. But to be clear, I'm not trying to offer a defensive "the released version will be tons better than the prologue patch!" objection; we're proud of what we shipped here.
Thank you!

Summary:
One day, the face of the Earth was changed permanently when it came into contact with a mysterious force known as the “Alpha Nebula”. With it, humans developed various unexplainable abilities, and divided themselves based on those traits.
The main factions include: The Tonitrui, the Excedente, the Praecantator, the Permuto, and the Northmanni. All have their own set of unique abilities that came with infamous Alpha Nebula collision, with the exception of the Northmanni who remain largely unchanged.
Among these races however, existed a special group of people who managed to retain all the other race’s abilities. They were a very powerful, but small isolated group of people, called “emulators”.
Arin Arlento was one of these people, living in a remote village with his grandfather and other emulators. All was going peacefully, until it was attacked by the Northmanni empire, who slaughtered his entire race and kidnapped his childhood friend, Aria.
Being the only other survivor, Arin escaped into the Northmanni empire, hiding and plotting his revenge. That is until finding out that Aria is still alive, and is being experimented on by the Northmanni.
Resentful of the world that took everything away from him, Arin begins his quest to retrieve his friend, and exact retribution on those who destroyed all that he held dear.
It’s one misguided man against the world.
Genres:[action, adventure, superpower, psychological, romance, war.]

The GUI, done by Trey Fletcher;

 
























Structure: the story would be mostly linear as the choices mostly appear during battle and have their instant bad ends attached to it.
The common route before each branching point is not very long as it serves to introduce the heroine who you would be branching into.
It has an enforced playing order of Alacria->Aniam.
Once the reader branches into the four other heroines the main story ends there and it focuses on the specific problems of the heroine.
Due to various issues, Episicava would be released in 3 separate volumes as opposed to one whole. 
Setting: one of the main features of this story is that it is adventure styled. The protagonist and his posse of troubled combat capable girls move about on the various continents to seek new shelter. Each continent represents an ethnicity or fault of human nature.
Northmanni- Modern day society. Styled after Japan and America.
Fulgur- represents humanity’s scientific progression and the harm it causes.
Tribus- represents African tribalism and the cultural implications it puts on its people.

Progress: 
story-
         1) prologue- 100% (will be used for demo)
         2)part 1- { common route 100%, Alacria's route 70%}
         3)part 2- {common route 100%, Aniam's route 70%}
        
 
art-    
         1) sprites - 85%
         2) bgs - 100%
         3) cgs - 95%
         4) GUI- 100%
         5) Character designs- 100% 
music- 100%
programming - 75% 

Team;
Kotario (me) - Lead dev and main writer
Snailmusk - Assistant dev and secondary writer
Tristan Hallihan (Cipher) - Secondary writer
Tim Reichert - Composer
Nathan Cleary - Composer/Sound designer
Leo Flores - Concept artist and character design
Zhao - Main Character Artist and character design
Hanh Chu - Secondary Character Artist
Kertasu - Secondary Character artist
Alais Legrand - Backgrounds Artist
Joe "Bonesy" - Programmer/Marketer/PR
Valhalla - Graphic Designer
miscellaneous
Please show your support for the Episicava visual novel by becoming a patron! thank you!
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3731847
check out our website at : http://epicworksnovels.com
Some of our recently done CGS:





Some of the backgrounds done by Alais Legrand;



Thanks!